Re: Re: [scons-devel] auto-configuration plans

On Thu, 7 Aug 2003, Christoph Wiedemann wrote:

> > Christoph Wiedemann wrote:
> >
> >> 1. SCons went beta recently, so we should try hard to fix the API 
> >> including the API to the SConf subsystem. The affected API is the 
> >> Configure - call, but also the Custom-Test stuff.
> >
> > Currently there is no API.  At least, I could not find it.  Since the
> > use of the SConf module is quite SCons-specific I already suggested to
> > make an interface at a lower level.  That avoids modifying parts of
> > SCons that use the SConf module.  And makes it easier to define an
> > interface that is not SCons-specific.
> 
> There *is* the current SCons API (documented in the SCons manpage). I just 
> meant that this API shouldn't change.

You can always implement this interface using the lower level interface
that Bram is looking for, this lower level interface can then both be
used by SCons (or SConf) and A-A-P without having to use other parts 
of either SCons (or SConf) or A-A-P. It needs to be self containd.
 
> >> 3. Caching the checks is really essential for a usable autoconf 
> >> replacement. I doubt, that a completely non-caching autoconf version 
> >> would be accepted by users. Though not perfect yet, the current caching 
> >> mechanism of scons is rather good, and i wouldn't like to see this good 
> >> thing dying...
> >
> > I don't see why caching is essential.  Can you explain?
> 
> It is essential from the developer's point of view. Developers want things 
> to go fast, so they won't accept a configuration tool which doesn't cache 
> results at all. That's just my personal viewpoint.

I have the opposite opinion, every time I build again I remove everything
so I know for sure that changes that I made to my system between this
configure run and the previous one are taken into account. Those changes
are frequent on developer systems ;-) A long time ago I didn't do this,
but then you can be searching very long for subtle bugs, so I use configure
everytime from scratch since then to prevent wasting precious time.
 
> After all, i think that it is worth trying to define an SCons-independant 
> API for the tests. Both worlds would benefit from such an API and the tests 
> defined on it.

I completely agree with you on this.

> Christoph
 
Have fun,
 
Aschwin Marsman
 
--
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